REDMOND, Wash. — This Seattle-area suburb has played a role in the space industry for more than a half-century, but the city of Redmond is shining brighter than ever on the final frontier — and now it has the brand name to prove it.
Welcome to the Redmond Space District.
Redmond Mayor Angela Birney showcased the newly established district in a proclamation issued today during her annual State of the City Summit at City Hall, with representatives of the area’s leading space companies in attendance.
The district designation applies to the entire city rather than to a specific neighborhood. Birney told GeekWire she hopes the campaign will draw even more space ventures to Redmond.
“It creates that ecosystem of innovation, technology, knowledge, people — all of that to create that really central place so they can come in and know that they’re going to get different resources for the space industry,” she said.
It all started in the late 1960s with the Rocket Research Corp., a company that later became part of Aerojet Rocketdyne. Aerojet’s Redmond operation has built propulsion systems for virtually every deep-space mission since the Apollo era. But Redmond’s space cluster hasn’t been resting on its laurels.
“Today, Redmond is home to an innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem alongside two of the largest satellite manufacturers in the world: SpaceX and Project Kuiper,” Kristina Hudson, CEO of OneRedmond, a public-private partnership for economic and community development, said in a news release.
SpaceX’s Redmond facility produces the satellites for the global Starlink broadband internet network. More than 3,800 Starlink satellites are working today, accounting for about half of all active satellites in orbit.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, headquartered in Redmond, is laying the groundwork for putting another 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit over the next few years.
Redmond-based Xplore is working on a different breed of spacecraft, the Xcraft satellite platform, which can be adapted for use in low Earth orbit or for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.
“Positioning Xplore in this hub for space activity and innovation was strategic,” said Lisa Rich, the company’s co-founder and chief operating officer. “We are surrounded by a community of customers and colleagues including SpaceX, Microsoft’s Azure Orbital and Amazon Project Kuiper, and we have fantastic vendors and suppliers.”
Honeywell Aerospace, Kymeta, RBC Signals, Spectralux and Triumph are among other space-centric ventures with a Redmond address.
The Redmond Space District campaign has already spawned an official logo and lapel pins. OneRedmond’s Hudson told GeekWire that in the future, the branding could appear on flags at the city’s space companies — and maybe even on welcome signs posted at the city limits.
“We want to make sure that we have that flag in the ground, [to tell people] that we have made more satellites in Redmond than in any other city across the world,” Hudson said.
In a follow-up email, Hudson said the Redmond Space District is “a brand that will raise the awareness of Redmond’s leadership in satellite production and innovation in the space industry.”
“This in turn, means opportunities to grow our regional industry through workforce development opportunities, company recruitment, and fostering innovation in this industry cluster,” she said.
For Birney, a former middle-school science teacher who was born during the Apollo era, the fact that her city is coming to be seen as a space district gives her a personal thrill that goes beyond dollars and cents.
“It really brings back my childhood wonderment of where can we go in space and what does that look like, and what will we see and explore, and what new worlds will we find,” she said.
